Endgame
by Insane Troll Logic
Summary: This is not the first time he has faked his own death. [Lydecker, postseries]


**Title:** Endgame  
**Disclaimer: **I have never owned a television show in my life.  
**Ships:** None. This is GEN!! LYDECKER GEN!  
**Rating: **PG  
**Summary:** This is not the first time he has faked his own death. [Lydecker, post-series  
**Author's note **Written for the **jamponyfic** fication for savannahjan. The prompt I used was: "Something post-series with Lydecker in it."

* * *

_**  
Endgame**_

The last touch is the blood. Larry Carmichael knows how far a little blood can get you, splattered in the right places, you can get the cops to believe whatever you want. Above all, you can make them stop looking for you.

This is post-Pulse America. Busy night, cops sees blood, the entire scene gets dismissed as a drug bust; another junkie off the streets and nobody gives a damn.

Which is just how he likes it. Things are a hell of a lot easier when the government, Familiars or Transgenics aren't on his tail. For all he knows, there are others. But honestly, he lost track of them a while ago. He just needs to keep moving, keep waiting.

This is not the first time he has faked his own death.

* * *

He goes to find Zack because Zack whatever the resentment he might hold knows a good plan when he hears one. Besides, he's made it clear before. He is not the enemy, at least not anymore. No, the enemy is Ames White and the Familiars, everything else is just background noise. 

But Zack is not Zack anymore. The tall blonde with the pursed lips answers to Adam McDonald and works on a farm. He suppresses the urge to start singing children's songs because that would have been inappropriate not to mention out of character for the new persona he'd crafted.

Cole Mitchell is very much the stoic type. He responds in monosyllabic, measured tones. He never offers personal information and is never asked. He is the type no one notices, the one eyes slid off when they passed. It is a nice change after years of leadership, even though sometimes he misses command.

Zack is a farm hand now. A big, friendly, lumbering guy who's picked up a hint of a country twang and a healthy tan. He has a thick, sloppy grin, the constant appearance that he doesn't know his own strength, it looks all _wrong_ on the man. Mitchell sneaks around for two weeks, half-convinced himself that it is all an act.

But not even Zack can play the part that well. He genuinely believes that he is a farm hand. There wasn't a spec of Manticore training left in the boy.

Which, of course, makes him useless to Cole Mitchell. Too much tinkering with memory can damage an operative permanently. This is an acceptable loss.

At the end of the month, Cole Mitchell disappears without a trace. There is no sign of a struggle, no note.

Nothing at all to connect Cole Mitchell to the Derek Smith heading to out of town by bus.

* * *

His name is not Donald Lydecker. At least, not originally. Lydecker just happens to be the name that sticks the longest. Manticore, in the government records at least, does not exist. Therefore, there is no reason why those working at Manticore should exist. Those people recruited are completely off the record. Any real contact to the world outside can compromise the mission.

Joseph Donaldson is offered a job at the lowest point in his life. His wife is dead, his life in shambles, his career in ruin… So when the highly prestigious military operation requests his services, he can't say no.

The only catch is that Joseph Donaldson can no longer exist.

The project has an identity waiting for him, one with a carefully constructed background that more or less mirrors his own.

The idea appeals to him. A new start, a new life. Donald Lydecker--,head of project Manticore--training the future of the American military.

A few years later, he looks back on the wasted life of Joseph Donaldson and realizes that he never used to be this ruthless.

But by then, it is too late to stop.

* * *

Paul Danner keeps a close eye on Seattle and a closer one on Eyes Only. The fight between the Transgenics and Familiars are not well publicized, but to the trained observer, they are becoming increasingly noticeable. Danner sits in the same corner of the same cafe everyday, drinking coffee, reading the paper and watching. The owner becomes so accustomed to his daily prescience that he eventually comes over and offers Danner a job.

Danner, being the agreeable sort, accepts. Besides, the bar has a television that plays the news station pretty much twenty-four-seven.

So, for two months, Danner serves coffee to the ever changing cast of customers, makes small talk with his boss and tried not to grit his teeth every time the sneering face of Ames White comes onscreen pledging to eradicate the transgenic menace.

It is at times like this when bits of his old personalities seep through the cracks of the new one. Times like this when the stony glare of Donald Lydecker invades the more amiable persona of Paul Danner.

Ames White will meet his end. Danner has complete confidence in that fact. Seattle after all has Max and Eyes Only watching out for it. And as for Transgenics and Familiars, well, he'd trained his kids well. They can take care of themselves while he stays low and waits.

He isn't going to hide forever.

* * *

The morning after the infamous Jam Pony fiasco, a supposed terrorist blows up a supposed abandoned warehouse. Under the rubble there are seven dead people all bearing an odd mark on their left arm that bears a startling resemblance to a pair of intertwined snake.

The police have one suspect: a man called Paul Danner spotted leaving the scene. Their only witness managed to glimpse a license plate and for four days, the manhunt dominates the news.

On the fifth day, there is a list of names and addresses in Eye's Only's inbox with a simple messaged reading: _the enemy lurks around every corner._ This of course sparks days of research yielding nothing but a disposable e-mail address, an abandoned apartment and a dead end.

On the sixth day, the car bearing Paul Danner's license plates is discovered submerged in the Harbor. Although there is no body, the search is abandoned. The whole thing is strangely reminiscent of a case that had occurred nearly two years before.

On the seventh day, Brian Eglean boards a bus headed to Ohio.

* * *

Car wreaks are the easiest way to go. Find the biggest body of water for the dump, crack the windshield, add some blood to the steering wheel and no one is ever the wiser. The corrupt, overworked police departments rarely look farther than surface view and dragging the lake is far too expensive for more low profile criminals.

Sure, there are a few who remained suspicious, but given enough time the whole thing lapses into the realm of cold cases. His kids aren't the only one trained in escape and evade.

So it really isn't any surprise that, when Donald Lydecker is run off the road one night, he uses the opportunity to disappear. At the last second, when he is preparing to leave the scene of the accident, he scatters his pictures--his only evidence of the familiar's treachery--into the water.

In his long and decorated career, it will be the first and only time he ever left a clue.

He hopes Eyes Only will get the message.

* * *

Two weeks after Paul Danner's mysterious disappearance and the factory bombing in Seattle, Eyes Only goes nationwide. In what the newspapers will all call a bust "bigger than Watergate," he outlines all the evidence he has against the Familiars and then he broadcasted _the list_: every single name Danner had left in his inbox plus dozens more. He really had done his homework.

Brian Eglean watches the chaos, the fallout from the broadcast with a smile on his face. The United States government, even in this weakened, post-Pulse world loathes conspiracies and loathes liars. The purging of Familiars from their legal system is swift and thorough. The ensuing violence, while not quite enough to be a war, is terrible but completely justifiable. The public hates the Transgenics, why should Familiars be any different?

Eglean makes his way to his storage locker in the Columbus, Ohio bus depot and pulls his key from the depth of his coat. Inside the locker is a single black briefcase. Checking over both shoulders, he snaps it open, examines the contents and smiles.

The tweleve o'clock train to Washington DC pulls in with a whistle.

Everything is right on schedule.

* * *

"I'm sorry, sir but Defense Secretary Sampson is not taking visitors without appointment at the moment. We are in a bit of a crisis here." 

The man in front of the receptionist, fingers the black briefcase at his side. "Tell him Donald Lydecker is here to see him."

After that, it is the express route straight to the top. Sampson stares him down, but he is Lydecker again: calm and in control. His spine is straight, eyes are forward. He's missed being Lydecker, missed the thrill of command.

"I heard you were dead," Sampson says.

Lydecker shakes his head. "Obviously, I'm not."

"Fine," Sampson says. "Why make this big a trip? Last I heard you were in Seattle."

Wordlessly, Lydecker heaves the briefcase up to Sampson's desk and flips it open. Inside is Max's DNA report, Manticore's blue prints and records--years of training reports, observations of the different X-series, endless details of missions well completed. Sampson eyes the contents with more than a little nostalgia.

"I thought we'd lost all of Manticore's intel."

Lydecker has him now. Despite recent downfalls, Manticore has been one of the country's most successful military ventures. He gives Sampson a tight smile. "Mr. Secretary, I have a proposition for you…"

(end)


End file.
